An exploration of the philosophies, thoughts and artistic yearnings, both as creator and audience, of Christopher F. Heinrich by Christopher F. Heinrich.

Monday, February 20

Love

I know Valentine's Day was a week ago, but love has been permeating my thoughts lately. I talked about it with a friend at brunch, heard about in in the homily last week, and thought about while running on a treadmill. Now you are going to be treated to the latest culmination of my views on the subject.

Straight up, love is sacrifice. Love is such a high respect and admiration for God, another person, an idea, an organization, a pet, an artistic work or whatever that one is willing to sacrifice their time, possessions, energy and all aspects of their being to it. For me, the ideal is that, in the case of two people, they so fully devote themselves to one another that they don't attend to their own well-being at all because their partner so fully takes care of them. Simple. What do you think?

Their is a rather large flaw in this perception of love in that it doesn't adequately describe God's love for us. Sacrifice requires one to lose something. God is freaking omnipotent and can't give anything up. To some extent this is alleviated by belief in the Trinity and that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all one and that Jesus is both fully human and divine since humans can sacrifice, but it remains a weak link. Furthermore, how can something completely good love something that is less than it? How can it respect that which it exceeds in everyway? I guess I need to think about this some more, still. Rest assured though, when I discover the answers to it all, I will share them with you.

A further thought. I would love a baby even thought I would exceed it in everywhere. Taller, better looking, more knowledgable. i could kick it's ass in checkers, parcheesi, battleship, or a fistfight as well as any game that can be played on a PS2. But hey, I could still love that baby.